I have a bunch of old VHS tapes that I want to digitize. I have never digitized VHS tapes before. I picked up a generic HDMI capture card, and a generic composite to HDMI converter. Using both of those, I was planning on hooking a VCR up to a computer running OBS. Overall, I’m rather ignorant of the process. The main questions that I currently have are as follows:

  • What are the best practices for reducing the risk of damaging the tapes?
  • Are there any good steps to take to maximize video quality?
  • Is a TBC required (can it be done in software after digitization)?
  • Should I clean the VCR after every tape?
  • Should I clean every tape before digitization?
  • Should I have a separate VCR for the specific purpose of cleaning tapes?

Please let me know if you have any extra advice or recommendations at all beyond what I have mentioned. Any information at all is a big help.

  • ChaoticNeutralCzechEnglish
    2·
    4 days ago

    So, uh… The EasyCAP device passes both fields into your PC but the video says that the driver does not interpret them correctly and uses probably the most common, incorrect deinterlacing method (see earlier comment with the method list). It is technically possible to reinterlace the video but I haven’t needed to do that, and you should do so before any lossy encoding to a file. I assume the community-written Linux driver has no such issue.

    The tutorial is mostly correct for people who want to create YouTube uploads with just one program (for YouTube, progressive video is required and the 480p stream cannot be 60 fps and has a terrible bitrate (and 576p for PAL is not available AT ALL so 1080p60 makes sense) but I strongly recommend not deinterlacing nor scaling in OBS, you can do that later. Record 480i (interlaced) files at very high bitrate and perform the deinterlacing in post.